


Terroir

by jouissant



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Drinking, First Time, Frottage, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 13:13:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4626552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jouissant/pseuds/jouissant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“He dreamed up some booze,” Noah said. “I don’t know, maybe you should go up there.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Terroir

**Author's Note:**

  * For [novelized](https://archiveofourown.org/users/novelized/gifts).



> Hi novelized! I'm just a random who read your exchange letter and was assaulted with Gansey/Ronan feelings, so I wrote you this treat. I was really taken with one of your prompts, with the thought of Gansey's hypersensitivity to giving his friends what they want and how that might play out if he hit on the idea of Ronan wanting him. Things kind of got away from me, but hopefully I did it justice! Hope you enjoy. <3

Gansey blew into Monmouth Manufacturing with a storm on his heels. The sky was pregnant with it; even in the dark you could feel the way the thunderheads bowed toward the earth, lightning roiling in their bellies. 

He was glad for the storm. It had been a good excuse to get Blue home. Up on their hillside he’d felt exposed, to the tinderbox atmosphere and Blue both. The feeling had lessened on the drive back down, and it was almost gone now. Now he just needed the storm to break, to drop a curtain between out there and in here, between her and everything he was actually allowed to touch. 

As soon as he got inside, there was a resounding crash from the second floor that had nothing to do with thunder. 

Lightning flashed, and Noah flickered in the corner of Gansey’s eye, a proper horror movie jump scare. “Hi Noah,” Gansey said calmly. He pointed to the ceiling. “You have any idea what that’s about?” 

“He dreamed up some booze,” Noah said. “I don’t know, maybe you should go up there.” 

When he’d finished speaking Gansey realized he wasn’t quite sure he’d heard anything. There was only the impression of speech, a whiff hanging in the air like petrichor.

Gansey frowned. His inability to fully grasp Ronan’s dreaming irked him, as did Ronan’s petulant reticence on the topic. A process Gansey didn’t understand coupled with some sort of unquantifiable substance sounded alternately horrifying and captivating. He wondered how far into whatever it was Ronan had gotten already. That would’ve been worth asking Noah, but predictably he was now nowhere to be seen. 

“Okay,” Gansey said. He spoke aloud for Noah’s benefit, if he was still around. “Once more into the breach.” 

***  


Ronan’s dream liquor was inky black and housed in a decanter that looked like something you’d find lying around a video game dungeon. Gansey had the wild thought that someone had managed to bottle Chainsaw, but there she was on the bedpost, intact and regarding him balefully.

Immediately he was more taken with the vessel than with what was inside. The decanter was finely made, with a pleasing heft. In their world it would have been expensive; here in this room he could only wonder what dreaming it cost Ronan. 

“I don’t suppose you have any idea what’s in this,” Gansey said, fingering the cut crystal. 

“Not a clue,” Ronan said. “But I’m pretty sure it’s bottomless.” 

“Great.” 

Ronan sprawled on his back on the bed, tossing a basketball up in the air so he could catch it again and again. His aim was sloppy, and as Gansey watched he missed spectacularly and bombed the ball onto his desk where it sent a troop of empty beer bottles clattering to the floor like bowling pins. Now Gansey had an idea about the sound. He was beginning to get a headache. 

He contemplated the drink. “What’s it taste like?” he asked. 

Ronan leered. His teeth were stained purple. “Like nothing else,” he said. 

Gansey made a command decision. He worked the stopper out with a pop and set it next to the decanter. 

“Dick Gansey Three, tying one on,” Ronan crowed from the bed. 

Gansey ignored him. “What’ve you got to drink from in here?” he asked. 

Ronan produced a chipped mug with _Virginia is for Lovers_ printed on it in red. There was a crust of something brown ringing the bottom which Gansey would choose to believe had once been coffee. The decanter was heavy enough to require both hands, and when Gansey sloshed a little into the mug a rich, sweet scent rose up around him. He swirled the liquid around under his nose, the way his father did with wine. He shut his eyes. 

Richard Gansey II knew from wine, and he liked to talk about it at a length that was only permissible because he treated it with the same genuine intellectual fervor he did his car collection. Gansey could respect obsession, even if he didn’t share it. After all, all four of his most important friendships hinged on the fact that other people could respect his. So he listened to his father go on about notes and subtleties, and he soaked it up osmotically the way all children gain a certain hazy knowledge of the things their parents love. Now, cradling the mug of dream liquor before him, he decided was glad he had. 

He took a sip. The drink felt oily on his tongue, slid immediately around his gums, his teeth. This was a drink you couldn’t sip. It made you thirsty, demanding great gulps. Gansey tipped the mug’s scant contents down his throat. This was Cabeswater, he realized. He was tasting Cabeswater. But there was something else too, something unctuous and grasping, something that reminded him of Ronan’s night horrors. If he drank any more of this--well, it didn’t bear thinking about. 

Ronan sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “S’good, huh?” 

Gansey licked his lips. He tapped them with his index finger thoughtfully. The rational part of him was swinging back into focus now, the part that liked to document and catalogue, the part that thought it might be nice to live inside the cereal box model of Henrietta one room over. It always took awhile after Blue. 

“I’d theorize,” he said, “that this doesn’t taste the same for you as it does for me.” He set the mug down.

Ronan shrugged. “Where’d you go?” he asked. 

“Huh?” 

“Before. I couldn’t sleep.” 

The thought of Ronan padding restlessly into his empty room troubled Gansey. “I, uh. Had an idea,” he said. “About the ley line. I thought...it needed to be dark. But it was nothing.” 

Ronan raised an eyebrow, curiosity clearly piqued. Gansey wondered how much of a dick he was likely to be. If this had been real world alcohol he might’ve had a hope of knowing. Chainsaw gave an incredulous chirrup that seemed to verbalize the eyebrow. 

“I’m starting to think she’s actually you,” Gansey said. 

Ronan looked pleased, because in a way she was. He whistled, and the dream bird hopped over onto his knee. He ran his palm over her glossy wings. 

“Nah, baby,” Ronan said. “I’m way prettier.” 

Gansey shook his head and sat down next to Ronan on the bed. He laid his hand palm down on the mattress. If he moved his pinkie they’d be touching. “Why couldn’t you sleep?” he asked. 

“Dunno. Storm, maybe. I was all twitchy. And you’ll think it’s weird--” 

“I think very little is weird right now,” Gansey said. “For better or worse.” 

“--I swear I could hear Kavinsky gunning that fucking Evo.” 

“Kavinsky’s dead,” Gansey said needlessly. 

“You’re telling me. Doesn’t change what I heard, though.” 

Kavinsky had dreamt a life-sized dragon made of fire, so Gansey supposed drag-racing from beyond the grave wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. Still, though. He’d really prefer to blame things on a substance. When it came to Ronan, Gansey was soothed by the possibility of influence, as if Ronan was a volatile chemical Gansey could render inert if he only added or subtracted the right elements. 

“How much of that stuff did you drink, anyway? And was Kavinsky before or after?” 

“Hmm. Both, I guess.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

Gansey ran a hand back through his hair, annoyed at Ronan’s probably deliberate vagueness. His hair was damp and stringy; somewhere along the way he’d gotten wet. He’d pounded up the sidewalk from the docked Pig, mind awash, the sky threatening to break apart. He seemed to be taking longer than usual to dry, and this annoyed him too. Monmouth was the opposite of stuffy, but Ronan could make the airiest room into a cave. If you couldn’t have a barn, why have anything close.

Ronan squinted at the decanter, still considering Gansey’s question. “It _means_ I dreamed this up awhile ago.”

 _Great._

Gansey sighed. “We talked about this, didn’t we? About what you were going to do when you couldn’t sleep?” 

“I didn’t go in looking for it, okay? It was just--it was there, like it was waiting for me. Sometimes I ask, and sometimes they want me to find things.” 

“Who’s they?” 

Ronan looked around him, mouth open, like he was trying to pluck the right words out of the air. He waved his hand inchoately. “The dreams,” he said finally. Gansey didn’t like the tip-of-the-iceberg feeling he got from the way he said the words. 

He sighed, and nudged Ronan’s knee with his own. “Do you always have to take the things they give you?” he asked. 

Ronan blinked. “Why wouldn’t I?” 

“Because--” 

Gansey shook his head and let the word dissolve into a frustrated noise. He didn’t have a good answer. _Because I doubt your ability to practice moderation in any form_ would probably not go over well. _Because you should be doing your homework_ even less so, and a nonsequitur to boot, except for the fact that it actually wasn’t. 

There was Glendower and there was Blue, and between them there was Ronan. Ronan, whose name these days conjured a creeping sort of low-level anxiety that made Gansey wake up in the middle of the night and spend an hour or so calculating both the GPA Ronan needed to stay at Aglionby and exactly how _Ronan_ he could be and still stand a chance. Unfortunately, only one of these was invariable. If Glendower lived in his heart, Ronan lived in his guts. Gansey couldn’t quantify the side effects beyond his chronic diffuse worry, but at the very least, Ronan was probably giving him an ulcer. 

_“Because?”_

Goddamn Ronan, thought Gansey. He was smiling that icepick smile. 

“Because how can you be sure they’re looking out for your best interests?” 

Gansey winced. He sounded painfully paternal. Surprisingly, though, Ronan actually seemed to take the question at face value. He looked contemplative, working his index finger between his gaggle of bracelets to pick at a scab. 

“They’re not,” he said finally. “They’re looking out for Cabeswater’s best interests. They just...assume they’re the same as mine. And if they’re not…” he shrugged. 

Gansey thought about the night horrors again. “Close enough?” 

Ronan looked over at the decanter. “Maybe.” 

He moved to get off the bed, eyes still on the dark liquid. It looked like a patch of perfect nothingness; even the glass seemed to lose its luster if you started long enough. But there was a richness to it all the same, the way a raven’s wing was every color and none of them all at once.

 _Like when there’s no picture on the television, but you can tell it’s still on._

Gansey had heard that somewhere before. Hadn’t he? 

Without thinking, he reached out and grabbed Ronan around the wrist, over his bracelets. Ronan twisted away. The way his skin and bones shifted under the cords of leather made Gansey feel sick. 

“What the fuck?” Ronan spat. “Let me go.” 

“It’s just that you shouldn’t--you _shouldn’t._ ” 

Ronan wrenched his hand back, rubbing at his wrist. “Oh yeah? What should I do instead, then?” 

“I don’t know. Come find me.” 

Gansey chewed on his lower lip. His stomach hurt, which might have been the dream liquor but was probably also Ronan. All those other nameless feelings. Just make things easy for once, he thought. For once leave out the kicking and screaming. 

Ronan put his hand on Gansey’s leg. “Come find you,” he said. He slid the hand incrementally upwards. “And what are we gonna do, build models all night?” 

Gansey swallowed hard. This was so Ronan, he thought, to play chicken this way. “If you want to,” he said. “We can do anything you want.” 

“Mmm,” Ronan said. His hand found the crotch of Gansey’s chinos, the battered cotton still soft and damp with rain. His mouth--which was infuriating, by the way, which drove Gansey absolutely _spare_ \--his mouth found the angle of Gansey’s jaw. 

“So what if this is what I want to do?” 

Ronan was waiting for him to pull away. He could feel it in the set of his body. Gansey felt a sudden froth of anger, because trust Ronan, trust Ronan to push Gansey like this, to make it a game he’d manage to win either way. Gansey turned his head, and their lips met. From outside came a great roll of thunder, and then it was Ronan who was pulling away, eyes wide. Immediately he swiped at his mouth with the back of his hand, the impulse to obfuscate almost subconscious. Then he laughed. In the silence that followed the thunder it seemed impossibly loud.

“Shit,” Ronan said. “Shit, Gansey. You’re not even--” 

Gansey ran a hand over his face. There was nothing much to say to that. Because he wasn’t, was he? Only...there was Glendower, and there was Blue. There was Adam, too, and oh how Gansey had fretted over Adam. But he kept coming back to Ronan, to the ache and burn of him. Gansey heard once that people’s stomachs can churn and churn for years until one day: boom, down they go, because it turns out it was their heart all along. 

“I don’t care,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.” Because in the end that was the truest thing. He would be anything for Ronan.

Ronan made a small sound, of disbelief maybe, or incredulity. But then he stilled and fell back onto his elbows on the bed and watched Gansey as warily as the bird had. This too was a test, Gansey knew. Ronan could push and push and push himself, pinball from wall to wall and crash headlong into whatever happened to be in the way. It figured that now would be the time he’d look first. 

What do you want, Gansey. 

Ronan’s face was what did it, in the end. In the time since Niall Lynch died Gansey thought he’d seen a million different kinds of anger etched in Ronan’s face, all of them brilliant and burning like the facets of a cut diamond. He had lines he shouldn’t have had for decades, particularly a big furrow across his forehead Gansey imagined he could smooth out with his thumb if only Ronan would let him, run along the cleft of it with pressure as if it were clay. You always seemed to need a little elbow grease with Ronan. But now he simply looked curious, and Gansey wasn’t sure he’d ever seen that look before. 

“Ronan,” he said, and crawled over him on the bed. 

The second time they kissed Gansey noticed Ronan’s lips were dry and tasted a little bloody; chapped lips in summer was strange but then so was Ronan, and anyway, he liked to find a stray shred of dead skin and worry it like he could unravel himself that way, from the mouth down. Gansey thought that next time he caught him at it he’d reach for Ronan’s wrist again and smack his hand away. He thought, _if grabbing Ronan’s wrist got me this far already I might just do it again_ , and so he kissed Ronan the third time with his hands held above his head. 

He waited for Ronan to buck him off, to at least say something disagreeable, but he never did. He just lay there, breath quickening, his chest a bellows. Gansey retreated, and for a second he felt Ronan tense and he was sure it was all over. But Ronan just made that sound again, yanked a hand free to cup Gansey’s cheek and kissed him back. Unequivocally, noted Gansey, and with a brash tenderness so exquisite as to be painful. Ronan’s tongue felt huge in Gansey’s mouth; funny how he’d never thought of that before while kissing, the simple mechanics of it. 

Suddenly Gansey was incredibly hot, his damp clothing cloying and steamy. He groaned and shucked off the buttondown he had on over his t-shirt, and he thought he heard Ronan laugh. They were so quiet otherwise, just their breathing and the rustle of too much fabric. Ronan rolled his hips up into Gansey’s. 

“God,” Gansey said. He stilled, waiting, and then Ronan did it again. He took his hand off Gansey’s cheek and lifted his arm back over his head so his wrists were crossed, so there was no question about whether or not Gansey should take hold of them. 

Gansey moved against Ronan like swimming, like he was dragging his body through deep water. There was a sweet streak of pleasure up the middle, framed by the sore places where he ground his hipbones against Ronan’s heavy belt. His shirt rode up and Ronan’s shirt rode up, their skin sticky where it touched. Gansey felt that same stickiness cling to his whole body. His upper lip was a swamp where it slid against Ronan’s, his scalp prickly with new sweat. 

Gansey didn’t know what to say, if he should say anything. He found Ronan’s mouth and kissed him again. He kept moving, kept meeting Ronan’s hips above the bed and pinning them with his own. Eventually they stopped kissing. Gansey had his face pressed into the comforter, musty because Ronan had abandoned it, sodden, in the washer for four days and Gansey had only discovered it when he needed to run a load and god, Ronan, how many times do I have to tell you--

His orgasm came with surprising suddenness, like he’d forgotten there was an end point to all of it, that the two of them wouldn’t simply writhe here on the bed forever in a sweaty feedback loop. A high and embarrassing noise made its escape from the back of his throat, and he rolled off Ronan and shoved his face into the side of Ronan’s face and his hand down the front of his pants. It wasn’t even Gansey’s hand that brought him over the edge so much as the _fullness_ of it all, his closed fist in his boxers, bare skin and Ronan’s whole body so close and his heart, his heart. And god, ugh, think things through, will you, Gansey? He slid his hand out and wiped it halfheartedly on Ronan’s comforter, which needed another wash anyway.

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” said Ronan starkly. 

_What?_ Gansey almost asked, mind cottony. _What is it?_

Beside him Ronan yanked his belt open and jerked his jeans and briefs down just far enough to reveal pale skin and bony hips and his cock, which Gansey supposed he’d seen? Before? He must’ve seen it, but not like this, not with Ronan’s hand around it. His motions were rabbity and frantic. He tossed his head to the side; his teeth found Gansey’s shoulder, biting a half moon of skin and t-shirt.

“Fuck, Gansey, fuck fuck fuck,” he chanted, looking down at himself as he came all over his belly, his t-shirt. He drew a great shuddering breath and collapsed onto his back, staring open-mouthed up at the ceiling. Gansey ignored the creeping damp and lay down beside him. 

“You didn’t even take your pants off,” Ronan said. 

“No,” said Gansey. 

“That’s so fucking gross, dude.” He was rubbing his wrist, the one Gansey had grabbed at the beginning. 

“Did I hurt you?” Gansey asked, sitting up. 

Ronan sat up too, tucking himself back into his pants. He was cradling his hand. “No. It’s just--” he shook his head. He was smiling. “It’s fine.” 

Gansey felt his face heat up. “Well,” he said, picking at a loose thread on his inseam. “Good.” 

“That’s all you’re gonna say? ‘Good?’” 

Gansey opened his mouth, then shut it again. “Take your shirt off,” he said. “And get up. This bed’s a disaster.” 

“Seriously?” 

_“Ronan.”_

Ronan sighed theatrically and did as he was told. When he moved Chainsaw clattered into Gansey’s line of sight and his blush deepened at the thought that she’d been there the whole time. But she was just a bird, so what did it matter. The way Ronan’s drink was just a drink, albeit dream-brewed and fathomless. He turned away from Chainsaw, denuding the bed and stepping out of his pants while he was at it. His boxers were ruined too, but he thought better of stripping off in front of Ronan now.

“I think we’re doing this backwards,” Ronan said. 

“Shirt,” said Gansey, beckoning.

“Gansey,” Ronan said. “Chill.” He tossed Gansey the shirt. He wadded it up in the sheets. 

“I thought the whole point was me sleeping, anyway,” Ronan said. “Which, I’m not sure if you noticed, but you’re kind of destroying my bed.” 

“Oh,” Gansey said. He dropped the pile of linen and clothing and frowned at it. He seemed to have forgotten it was night. What time was it, anyway? What time had it been when he came back to Monmouth? 

“Are you tired?” he asked Ronan. “You can sleep in my bed if you’re tired.” Gansey wasn’t tired. He felt like he could run a marathon, or row the length of the Mississippi River, or dig to the center of the earth. 

“A little bit,” Ronan said. “I get drowsy. After.” 

Gansey peered at him. A low rumble of thunder sounded, far off now, over the mountains where Glendower slept. Ronan slouched in the odd light, shirt gone, hands in his pockets. Tomorrow Gansey would get a look at that wrist up close. Tomorrow the five of them would troop through some hidden meadow, the drone of insects their soundtrack, weeds nodding all around them and thunderheads swarming on the distant horizon. 

Tomorrow night another storm would break, and when it did Gansey would know whether or not he’d dreamt this. 

Tomorrow, though. He guessed the laundry could wait until then too. 

“Come on,” he said to Ronan. “Let’s get you to bed.”


End file.
